Raw Competition

Journalism in much of Western Europe has long had a strong voyeur strain to it. Its girlie magazines outflesh their American counterparts and many general publications have large appetites for nudity and gamy gossip. Hoping to collar part of the European audience, Hugh Hefner has introduced Italian and German editions of Playboy. The mid-November debut of the Italian Playboy (circ. 350,000) posed a direct threat to Playmen (circ. 400,000), a home-grown imitation that has surpassed its American model in spice, if not in style, and has won a profitable niche for itself (TIME, Jan. 18, 1971). While Rome took in Hefner's prepublication ballyhoo, Playmen Editor Adelina Tattilo, 40, a stunning mother of three, behaved like a card shark with the winning ace.

At month's end, the December Playmen appeared, bearing the most sensational set of nude pictures in recent memory. There, in full color, were 14 shots of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis lounging on Husband Ari's isle of Skorpios. Nothing of Jackie was left to the imagination, and within days nothing of Playmen was left on newsstands.

Chivalry. The indecent exposure of the ex-First Lady excited Europe, where Jackiemania is still rampant, and enthralled Italians of both sexes. "It was the women, above all, who were curious," observed Rome's Il Messaggero. "Not very sexy," purred one Italian matron, "and a little bit wooden." Milan's Il Giorno noted chivalrously--and accurately--that Jackie's figure, at 43, is "still elegant, slim, and young."

According to Tattilo, the shots were taken from a motorboat during the summer of 1971 by "five or six photographers, some Italians, some Greek." Although she refused to identify them further, the word in Athens is that a well-known Greek veteran of past photographic raids on Skorpios was a participant. It has been rumored that ten photographers worked 15 months on and under the waters off Skorpios and that one of them almost drowned. Another report claimed that the pictures were taken with a remote-control movie camera hidden on the island.

Signora Tattilo bought the pictures from Milan Photographic Agent Settimio Garritano (for, she claims, "more than $34,000 and less than $51,000") and saved them for the rainy day of Playboy's Italian appearance. Others put the price far higher and far lower. The Italian newsmagazine Panorama purchased two black-and-white reproductions for an undisclosed sum. Exclusive rights to the portfolio were being hawked in other European countries and the U.S. for fees reportedly as high as $62,000. By week's end, the sole confirmed taker was Paris' France Dimanche, which says that it paid only the "usual price" and promises to airbrush Jackie into a bikini. On Times Square last week, scarce import copies of Playmen were selling for $5 and $6--twice the normal U.S. price.

The financial wheeling and dealing does not quite obscure the stark invasion of Jackie's privacy. Editor Tattilo is unrepentant. "After all," she said last week, "Jackie knew that photographers have shot at that particular location more than once. If she didn't want to be photographed, she should not have exhibited herself." Others, more concerned with taste and privacy, might echo Turin's La Stampa, owned by Fiat Chief Gianni Agnelli, a longtime friend of Jackie's: "Italy would have done better not to publish those pictures."

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